Website flipping involves buying or building sites and selling them to make profit.It is a very profitable way to make money online if it is done properly. Several individuals who are working online have successfully implemented this simple process to make several thousand of dollars.
However, it might not be an ideal way for a starter to earn money online. This is because it requires an initial capital outlay and you will also have to spend time to make the website valuable before you can sell it.
- Make Online Money With Domain Flipping
- How to Make Money Fast With Website Flipping
- How to Earn Money Online Regularly With Website Flipping
- Can You Make Money Flipping Websites?
- How do I Flip a Website?
- Strategies for Website Flipping
- Does Flipping a Website Work?
- How Long Does it Take to Flip a Website?
- How Much Money Can You Make Flipping Websites?
- How to Make Money on Flippa
- What Percent Does Flippa Take?
- How do You Successfully Flip a Domain?
- Where is The Best Place For Domain Flipping?
- What Kind of Domains Are Best For Flipping?
- When is The Best Time to Flip a Domain to Make the Most Cash?
- Is Domain Selling Still Profitable?
- Is a Website a Good Investment?
- Do You Have to Pay to Own a Website?
Make Online Money With Domain Flipping
Domain flipping is the easiest way to start website flipping. You start by buying a domain name and building a new website around it. It will take you some time to ensure that it is getting a good amount of traffic and it has started to make profit before you can sell.
Read Also: How to Successfully Market a New Website in 2022 – 2025
Once the site is generating money regularly through paid links, adverts or membership, it is ready for sale. You can also make some quick money by buying a domain that is related to a newly launched product that is selling fast. This domain name can be sold to another person without building a site on it.
How to Make Money Fast With Website Flipping
If you don’t want to spend time building a site, you can buy a site that is built by another person. All you need to do is to find a site that is getting good traffic and is showing some profit. You can find a lot of these sites by going to Flippa.com or eBay.
Make a list of potential good deals and go to a place such as WebsiteOutlook.com to check their estimated worth so that you can know how to negotiate. Make sure that the site that you buy is generating income. Once you have purchased the website, you can redesign and reposition it so that it can be more profitable.
Do not buy sites that have domain names that are too long. The shorter the name is, the quicker you will be able to find a buyer. It is better to focus on sites that are based on specific niche keywords. These types usually generate money faster than generic name sites.
How to Earn Money Online Regularly With Website Flipping
If you want to consistently make money with this process, there are certain things you have to know. You have to know how to build a site that will earn money. You also have to know how to estimate how long it will take the site to become ready for sale. This knowledge will help to be able to have a workable plan for your website flipping business.
There is no restriction to the number of sites that you can flip. However, you should be patient to learn from people that have more experience before you start committing your finances to any project.
Start with small projects and move on to bigger ones. It is usually better for a newbie to start by building websites. This will help you to learn all that is involved in the entire process from start to finish.
Can You Make Money Flipping Websites?
After months or even years of improving and upgrading the bought website, taking advantage of easy wins, and pushing up the revenue numbers, the time has come to flip the site for a big profit. Preparation is key to making this next part of the process go smoothly.
There are certain steps that need to be taken to make the migration process as smooth as possible.
Make sure to:
- Create a separate email account for the site (if not done already) and forward site-relevant emails to the email account to hand over
- Have multiple up-to-date backups of the website prior to starting migration. Backup hosting is a good idea, too.
- Have all crucial information set aside for hosting, migration, and anything specifically required in the sales contract
- A handy list of passwords for you or your tech guy to make sure the process can go smoothly
Places to Sell
There are multiple options for where to list a site for sale. You can consider your options based on the site, the earnings, and the seller’s experience with flipping sites. Some options are more beginner-friendly, others tend to be better for experienced sellers.
How do I Flip a Website?
1. Choose your content
Try to find websites that you are well versed with.
You should be passionate about it and willing to write excellent content for the website.
This will bring out the best and engaging content.
Once you have a proper niche website that fits you, buy a website that is dormant or creates one (whichever you feel is necessary or profitable).
2. Domain name
The domain name should be catchy and if it contains highly search keywords, all the much better.
You can easily buy the domain name online using any service provider.
Once you have the domain name, you are almost done with the basic step.
Remember to choose a domain with highly searched keywords, as this will certainly be a huge help and will serve as an added advantage to you moving forward.
3. Web hosting
Now that you have done the basics of buying a domain name, next you need a platform to host your website.
Select a suitable web hosting plan from the numerous ones available.
They are quite reasonable and you could literally find hundreds of them.
Once you have chosen the platform to host your site, link the domain name with the web host.
4. Template or WordPress
WordPress or Templates are the best trending designs in web designing.
You will have all the inbuilt plug-ins and layouts required for your website.
You just need to insert the content for your website and you are done.
With this, you are now ready to launch the website and start earning.
5. Go for Advertising
Google AdSense provides a code that can be inserted on your website.
This is a free service initially, which will help you earn.
You could also check out Amazon affiliates, Click bank or Commission Junction which helps improve traffic on your website, and also helps you earn.
6. Rich content
People are attracted towards rich and genuine content basically on any website.
So, it is equally important to concentrate on posting unique quality content regularly on your websites to keep it well optimized, updated and to attract traffic.
7. SEO
Optimize your website based on the search engine requirements along with the keywords used by the targeted audience.
You could initiate more traffic via social media sites as well.
8. More traffic – More selling potential
The more traffic you attract, the more potential it provides to find genuine buyers.
This will assist in the visibility of the website in the digital world.
9. Auction or find buyers
You could auction the site at various auction platforms or find potential buyers online.
One thing you need to be careful about here would be anonymous buyers, as most of the transactions made by anonymous buyers are being reported as fraud.
10. Transfer domain
Once you have come to an agreement with the cost and terms, you should transfer the domain to the buyer, and they will take control of your website henceforth.
Repeat these steps, 1 to 10 for another website and flip it once it is ready to be yielded.
This step by step procedure has helped many amateurs make a profit from flipping websites.
Strategies for Website Flipping
These strategies that we are about to discuss are applicable to experienced website flippers and are not recommended to newcomers.
There are many reasons for this, which you will understand while reading the strategies.
However, there is no harm in having the knowledge and trying to utilize it anytime you are ready.
So, let’s get to the strategies!
• Buy an active website for a targeted product you already sell, and you could redirect this traffic to your own site via advertising, email listing and more. This is a quick way to establish a consumer base and improve your traffic exponentially in a short period of time.
• Buy a site to generate only advertising revenue. By targeting websites only for advertising, you will still make money irrespective of a sale or not since you are advertising products of various brand and various e-commerce giants.
• Buy a site with the intention of a quick flip. This is being done many since the main aim here is to improve the quality of the website and auction it to the highest bidder, an easy and quick money maker.
• Community driver sites are targeting a particular niche audience and there are a lot of form filled consumers. These sites can be used in generating advertising revenue and redirect to different websites where your products are being sold.
• Keep looking for those sites that have the potential to burst in the future, this helps you in a long-term vision. Rich content with proper keyword optimization can be an effective selling platform.
• Some experts buy the website mainly because of domain irrespective of what the website is about or what it sells. This is basically because of the significant value of the domain which will go along with the trend in the future.
Does Flipping a Website Work?
If a website is so profitable, why flip it in the first place? Why not just keep it? This is a good question, and there is nothing wrong with keeping profitable sites and building a portfolio. Many people do just that.
There are still good reasons for selling a website. For one, the large payout is guaranteed money once the sale is complete.
While in theory, I could make more by keeping a site for more than 40 months, what about the expenses involved in keeping the site up? What if a Google update hits the site and it loses half its traffic (and revenue) overnight?
A 35x-40x payout is safer.
Another reason is scaling the business. A site paying out $2,000 a month is good cash flow. But selling that site for $80,000 all at once provides cash to acquire new sites, outsource content for other sites, and start work on multiple new sites to flip.
As nice as $2,000 a month cash flow is, it can’t do that level of work for scaling up a business.
For individuals looking at quitting a job for an early retirement, having that cash in hand might be much more valuable than the monthly payouts. Or for a recent college graduate looking to wipe out those student loans once and for all.
Flipping websites allows the buyer to collect monthly payments while scaling it up for sale. Cash flow plus one big payout.
How Long Does it Take to Flip a Website?
As mentioned websites can grow exponentially given the right circumstances. Depending on your goals, website flipping can take as short as a few months or as long as 5+ years.
For those looking to make a significant income flipping websites, it’s likely you’ll need to hold the website for at minimum one year. If you can output strong content that gains traction, you could opt to sell your website in less than one year.
How Much Money Can You Make Flipping Websites?
Flipping websites offers an almost limitless income potential. Let’s do some math to help determine how much money you can make flipping websites.
Let’s assume that you can make $5,000 per website flip. If you can flip 5 websites per year, that’s a total of $25,000 annually. Not too bad.
But sometimes it’s better to work with percentages. Let’s assume that you can increase the value of a website by 20% annually. This means that if you purchase a website for $10,000 and grow it for a couple of years, it could be worth $14,400 in just 2 years, a $4,400 profit!
How to Make Money on Flippa
When it comes to buying and selling websites, there are platforms that helps you achieve this, one of the leading places you can buy and sell websites online is Flippa.
You can make money on Flippa in the following ways:
1. Create a Flippa Account
To be able to make money on Flippa, you need to create a Flippa account. Creating an account is free. You can click here to create an account now.
2. Buy a quality online business
This one is for people who are looking to start their own online business but have no idea what to do and where to start from. The answer is Flippa. On Flippa, you can find online businesses, buy and set up your own online company. By now you should know that online entrepreneurship is making people not just millionaires but billionaires. Almost everyone is online and that is why you should consider having an online business.
There are people who have developed online businesses that are already making big income and for some reasons are putting them up for sale on Flippa. You can also find new online business ideas that has been developed without making income yet but with massive potentials. It all depends on your budget and what you want.
The first step is to decide what type of business you want. There are many ideas to choose from. You will find eCommerce stores, blogs, marketing tools, Search engines, Apps, Design blogs, news websites, niche websites, forums, social networks and many businesses listed.
The choice is down to you, do your research and decide what business will be right for you.
Once you have made your decision, login to Flippa and search for it. You will find a search button on top of the page, type the kind of business you want and search.
You will immediately see options that fits into what you are looking for. The next step for you will be to use the filter on the left side of the screen to help you select the appropriate business for you. There are many things to filter. You can decide to look for businesses older than a year or two or more. You can filter businesses by how much it generates and so on.
You can click on each business you see more. Once you click, you will be able to see how much the business has generated in the past year, how much is the expenses and profit. You will also see the work required to keep business running and all that. You can message seller to get more details.
Here is our advice:
- Look for business older than a year
- Business with consistent profit margin
- Don’t pay more than 20 times annual earnings of business to buy it unless you are very certain.
- Do your due diligence. Request all finance report and be sure it will be profitable for you
Once you have decided to buy. You can either place a bid or use the buy it now. The bidding process is tough if business is viral, you have to be up to ensure you are not out bid. The buy it now price is usually high but gives you instant access. You can also negotiate with buyer for a price.
We recommend using Escrow or Flippa escrow for payment. That way the transactions will be fully secured. You will pay money into the escrow. The seller release business to you. You take possession and tell Escrow to release money to seller once you confirmed all is alright.
3. Build and sell websites or apps
This involves building a website or app from scratch then selling it on Flippa. The advantage of this is that it wont cost you much money but may cost you time. The good thing is even if you do not know how to build website, you can find someone on fiverr to do it for you from $5.
You can decide to build websites or apps and sell them right away. There are some websites and apps that people will be interested in paying good money for even if it is brand new without making profit. As long as the idea is mind blowing.
Alternatively, you can build websites or apps, run it for some months, grow it, generates income, then sell it on Flippa.
The most important thing here will be ideas. You will need good ideas for websites that you know people will buy and target the websites towards a particular niche or country.
If you do not know how to develop websites, that is no problem. Just have an idea. You can go on Fiverr and find someone to develop your website ideas for you from $5 and you sell it on Flippa for a good money.
Once you are ready to sell, just got o Flippa, login and click on start selling. Choose what you want to sell, set your price and verify ownership. That is all.
4. Flipping
This is the most talked about way of making money on Flippa. This involves buying websites, apps or domains on Flippa and reselling it on Flippa without much delay. A lot of people do this as full time job and they make good money flipping on Flippa.
It is very easy and straightforward. You go on Flippa, look for websites, domains or apps with very big potentials but with a low ‘buy it now’ or low bids. Buy it. You can then hold on to it for a week then resell it for bigger money or you grow it for a little time then sell it for huge profit.
You will have to be on Flippa as much as you can, watch out for bargain buys, pick them up and resell for their true worth.
5. Sell expired domains
Selling domains on Flippa is somehow hard because buyers mostly look for a simple and short domain name or a domain name with long page authourity. So how do you work your way around this? Go to websites that list expired domains. For example go to ExpiredDomains, use the filter and search for premium looking domain.
Once you find a domain name, hurry to Namecheap and register domain name for cheap then go to Flippa and sell it.
6. Sell your blog
If you run a blog that you barely have time for anymore but have good number of visitors and potentials. You can list it for sell on Flippa. You will find buyers.
What Percent Does Flippa Take?
Fees and charges on Flippa are quite simple – you pay a listing fee and a Success Fee. The listing fee is due on all listings (regardless of a sale), and the Success Fee is payable when your sale completes successfully.
Please note that all fees and charges are in US Dollars (USD) and there may be currency exchange or other banking fees applicable from your financial institution or card issuer.
Listings on Flippa are now $29 for all asset types, more details can be found on our Pricing page.
- Variable Success Fees are charged depending on the final sale value and whether you choose to be assisted by a Broker.
- There is currently no fee to use Flippa as a Buyer.
For the Standard pricing ($29), there are Buyer fees when using Escrow.com depending on the amount of your purchase.
If Enhanced, Premium or Ultimate Boost Packages are purchased then Flippa takes care of the escrow variable transaction fee.
Transaction Amount (Merchandise + Shipping) | Fee % |
$0 – $5,000 | 3.25% ($10.00 minimum) |
$5,000.01 – $25,000 | $162.50 + 0.26% of amount over $5,000 |
$25,000.01+ | 0.89% |
There are flat fees to the Seller (usually $20) which may apply to cover Escrow.com’s cost in sending international wire transfers.
How do You Successfully Flip a Domain?
Let’s say you’re interested in flipping a domain. What steps do you need to follow to accomplish this?
1. Search for a domain
First, you need to find a domain that’s worth buying. If you want to make the most cash, you’ll need to optimize your strategy by finding a domain that’s both inexpensive to initially purchase and potentially lucrative to sell.
You could also head to a domain auction, where you can view a list of many domains currently being sold. Make sure to check the expiring domain auctions for possible options as well.
2. Evaluate the domain
When you find a domain that’s friendly to your budget, you’ll need to spend some time evaluating it. There are several factors that make a domain name potentially valuable, including:
- Length
- Brandability
- Relevance
- Search friendliness
You’ll likely need to do some independent research to predict whether you can eventually sell the domain for more than you initially paid for it. Make sure you’re also looking at historical sale prices for similar domains.
3. Register the domain name
If your due diligence checks out, you can proceed with buying the domain and registering it to your name. This is usually a simple process that doesn’t take much time.
4. Find a buyer for the domain
This is the most difficult and most variable step of the process.
There are a few different angles you can take here; for example, you could use a buy-and-hold strategy, minimizing your effort and waiting for interest in the domain to grow.
They may reach out to you with an offer or bid, privately, if they’re interested.
You could also take a more aggressive approach; for example, you could create a landing page for your domain, appealing to people who might be interested in buying it.
And if you’re interested in a faster, direct approach, you could list your domain at an auction.
5. Sell the domain
Finally, your buyer will pay you for the domain, and ownership will transfer upon their new registry. Again, this is usually a simple process that doesn’t take much time.
Where is The Best Place For Domain Flipping?
There are two basic stages for domain flipping: buying and selling. If you use an all-encompassing domain marketplace like GoDaddy, you can use the same platform for both stages of the process.
You may also be interested in using a specialty tool if you have specific needs or a specific strategy to follow.
For example, if you’re following the domain drop catching strategy, you’ll need to have a tool that allows you to find recently expired or soon-to-be-expired domains. ExpiredDomains.net and JustDropped.com are two popular options here.
Expired domain auctions through GoDaddy Auctions are also a tried-and-true option.
Once you’ve acquired the domain, you may not need to use an auction or marketplace to sell it — especially if you’re trying to appeal to private sellers.
Auctions can hasten the process, but some domains can benefit from being held publicly for an extended period of time. It will all depend on the type of domain you’re trying to sell and the potential market for that domain.
What Kind of Domains Are Best For Flipping?
What kind of domains are ideal for domain flipping? That’s hard to say definitively, but you can improve your results by seeking domains that are both inexpensive and capable of being sold for a high price.
Accordingly, the best domains to flip have some of the following qualities:
Expired
Domains whose registry has expired tend to be cheaper than their counterparts. This is because they’re reentering the market for the first time in a while and because the owner isn’t necessarily interested in turning a profit.
You won’t have to competitively bid against other domain flippers at a public auction, nor will you have to make a high private bid to appeal to a private holder.
Instead, you’re taking advantage of a low-cost, fresh opportunity.
Short
Short domain names are a mixed bag for domain flippers. In general, the shorter a domain name is, the more valuable it is. That’s because short domains are easy to type, easy to remember, and easy to market.
The trouble is most other domain-hunters understand this concept and are aggressively searching for short domains alongside you. Accordingly, the purchase prices are pushed higher — which means you may not be able to make them an integral part of your strategy if your budget is limited.
New
New domains are also highly valuable. Occasionally, new domain name extensions and modifications will emerge; when this happens, you can capitalize on potentially lucrative opportunities before anyone has a chance to evaluate them.
You can also take advantage of new products, services or concepts by seizing a domain early in its evolution. For example, cryptocurrency is a fairly new concept; if you caught on to the concept very early, long before it became popular, you likely could have bought a domain like Cryptocurrency.com for a very small amount of money.
Local
Locally specific domain names are also valuable domain flipping opportunities.
They’re specific enough that you probably won’t face a ton of competition from prospective buyers, but they’re valuable enough that you can sell them for a fair amount of money.
For example, you may not be able to get HotDogs.com because of how short and popular it could be, but you might be able to get YourCityHereHotDogs.com.
Keyword-friendly
You should also consider how friendly the domain is for search engines and search engine optimization (SEO). With Google’s Keyword Planner, you can research a specific topic and learn which keywords and phrases related to that topic seem to get the most searches.
The more actively searched the word or phrase is, the more valuable it will be when it’s included in a domain name. Like with short domain names, the problem here is that you might face additional competition by seeking these lucrative opportunities.
When is The Best Time to Flip a Domain to Make the Most Cash?
In many ways, domain flipping is all about timing. Purchasing a domain before the general public realizes how valuable it is, or selling it when it reaches peak popularity, can make your domain flipping strategy profitable.
So when is the “best” time to flip a domain?
For selling a domain, timing is much more complicated.
If you’re interested in getting immediate cash, selling at auction after completing your registry may be the best option. Some domains are best incubated for a short period of time before flipping, and others may need to be held for months, or even years, before they reach peak maturity.
You’ll need to consider the nature of the domain before deciding the best time to sell.
Is Domain Selling Still Profitable?
You can keep a domain for 10 years and still sell at a considerable profit. While you are waiting for it to sell you can monetize the domain and throw in some SEO, which in turn can justify the cost to the buyer.
Most domains end up paying for themselves so your portfolio won’t really cost you any money out of pocket.
Remember to focus on the areas you know well and you will be much more successful than buying and selling domains you think would benefit someone in an industry you know little about.
Is a Website a Good Investment?
With an understanding of SEO and marketing, buying a website can offer a great return and be a great platform to build off of. However, there are many pitfalls that could cause bad outcomes.
One great benefit of purchasing an income producing website over many other investments is the level of control you have over it. Not only that, but how easy many changes can be.
To contrast with real estate, you have a lot of control over your asset. Though to make changes you often have to get permits and approval from the city, and the changes are often very slow and expensive to implement.
If you want to write a bunch of great content to add to the site, you are free to do that. Want to hire a writer to publish a bunch of content? You can do that too. Want to hire an editor to clean up the articles that are on the site so they are higher quality? You guessed it, you can do that too.
This is a double edged sword though. You are not only in control of the website, but you are responsible for its stewardship.
The market for income producing websites has been trending towards for the past 20 years. Not only has the total market, number of sites, size of sites all grown but the valuation has gone up as well. This is a trend that will likely continue.
For instance, sites used to trade at 5-10 months multiple of their net income. Now, 30-60 months seems to be the norm. If this trend continues, simply holding onto a website for a few years could give you an upside return on sale. Plus you will be receiving profit during the months you held it.
At 60 months valuation that means a website making $1,000 a month would cost $60,000. That is a 20% annual return on cash invested. In most asset classes, that would be a great return.
The upside potential doesn’t stop at just continuing on the present profit either.
The best websites to buy are ones that you can identify a strategy on how to improve them.
If you can improve the website, you can improve it’s income producing potential. This also improves the potential price it would be worth if you decided to sell it.
Do You Have to Pay to Own a Website?
On average, though, you can expect to pay an upfront cost of around $200 to build a website, with an ongoing cost of around $50 per month to maintain it. This estimate is higher if you hire a designer or developer – expect an upfront charge of around $6,000, with an ongoing cost of $1,000 per year.
Website Feature | Upfront Website Cost |
---|---|
Website Domain | $12 – $60 |
Website Hosting | $35 – $600 |
SSL Certificate | $0 – $200 |
Website Template or Theme | $0 – $200 |
Ecommerce Functionality | $20 – $24,000 |
Website Content | $0 – $5,000 |
Apps and Integrations | $0 – $100 |
SEO and Marketing | $0 – $90 |
There are three main ways to build a website: use a website builder, build with WordPress, or hire a web designer. Which method you choose will have a huge impact on how much your website costs. For example, creating content is free with a web builder, but can cost over $5,000 if you’re using a web designer.
Read Also: Make Money Online Building Mobile Websites
Website builders are usually the cheapest way to build a website. While WordPress is technically a free, open-source platform, you have to pay for hosting, themes, and plugins, and even professional help from a developer, which can increase your total cost.
Hiring a web designer is the most expensive option, but it’s the best choice if you need absolute control over the build and customization of that site or that offers the highest levels of complex functionality.
Realistically, you don’t want to pay less than $5,000 for a web designer, otherwise you might end up with a disappointing end result that you’re not happy with, but that you’ve still paid a few thousand for. Our tip for this: you can get web design pricing information that’s bespoke to your requirements by using the web design comparison tool powered by our trusted partners Expert Market.
You need to choose the right method for you. Hiring a web designer is expensive, but it takes the technical hassle out of your hands. Using a website builder is cheap and easy, but you don’t get the same level of control as you do with WordPress. WordPress gives you flexibility, but it’s the most time consuming and hands-on approach.
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